Survival series are thriving

Published: Tuesday, February 25, 2014 at 10:30 a.m.

Last Modified: Tuesday, February 25, 2014 at 10:30 a.m.

You’re stranded in the middle of nowhere. No food. No shelter. No nothing. What should you do?

Roll cameras! It’s a perfect setting for a survival TV show.

As Survivor, the granddaddy of survival reality game shows, kicks off its 28th season Wednesday (7 p.m.), a new wave of series is rolling in. Fox plans a show that will play out over a year; a second season of Discovery’s Naked and Afraid arrives in March; and Syfy’s Opposite Worlds gets ready to crown a winner.

“Social experiment” is the buzzword for the genre that has its roots in The Real World and Big Brother. Design a challenging situation and throw people into it. Watch it unfold. See them fight, befriend and back-stab each other. Sure, they’ve got to figure out how to manage mosquitoes and come up with fresh water, but it’s the human interaction that’s the real test of survival.

Fox is creating Utopia, which will move a group of people to an isolated, undeveloped location, where they will spend a year creating a civilization. “Utopia will be the largest, most ambitious social experiment on television,” says Fox’s Simon Andreae.

Also designed as a social experiment is Syfy’s Opposite Worlds, which wraps its first season Wednesday. It started with 14 people on two teams with a glass wall separating them. One team is in the future, a modern and sleek setting where everyone wears white; the other is in the past, living in caveman-like conditions, wearing fur and cooking their own food. Physical challenges and Twitter input decide eliminations. At stake is $100,000.

The primitive side “gives it an element of The Hunger Games,” says Syfy president David Howe.

Host Luke Tipple concedes that the actual survival part of the show is window dressing. “They may believe they are surviving through perils, but let’s face it, they’re not in the wilderness of Alaska trying to eke by on grubs and shrubs.”

Instead, contestants are in an aircraft hangar in Los Angeles. The real test is in forging bonds to win challenges and fans, Tipple says. “Living there isn’t so much survival as we typically think of it, but what they’re forced to do socially is precisely the same.”

It’s Discovery’s thing

If you think of true survival shows, you’d probably first turn to the Discovery Channel.

“It’s something that’s very distinctive for us,” says network president Eileen O’Neill. “It’s been part of our brand for a number of years, going back to the Bear Grylls days.” But when it was revealed in 2007 that Grylls and the crew stayed at hotels after filming, the genre was sullied.

Discovery has pushed the limits with Naked and Afraid, which returns March 6.

“We really take it to another level in Season 2,” promises producer Jay Renfroe, adding that the show’s popularity meant finding survivalists to get naked and afraid in the wilderness for 21 days was much easier. “It became a little bit more of a badge of honor for people to do this.”

Most Discovery survival shows — last year’s Dude, You’re Screwed; Dual Survival, which kicked off in 2010; Les Stroud’s 2004 series Survivorman; 2010’s Man, Woman, Wild — offer how-to scenes. But Naked and Afraid is more of a social experiment, Renfroe says. “It’s interesting to see how the gender roles play out — the strengths and weaknesses.”

Three crews are filming now in Peru, Belize, Fiji, Bolivia, Cambodia, Argentina, Nicaragua and Madagascar. A medic is on hand at base camp, but the contestants are not helped or coached, he says. “We turn them loose, and we don’t know what they’re going to do. It’s like taking a dog off a leash in the park.

“I remember the first show in Africa, thinking this is some crazy idea. Are they really going to take their clothes off? Are they going to survive? And they did. And you’re watching it unfold.”

‘Survivor’ set the template

That’s what happened over the seasons of Survivor. We’ll watch it unfold again, with 18 new castaways in Cagayan, a province in the Philippines. With two more seasons already ordered, it is one of the longest-running reality competition shows on television.

“When Survivor started, there weren’t a lot of shows like ours on the air,” says host and executive producer Jeff Probst.

It may seem more game than survivalist challenge, and Probst acknowledges that the show has changed. “We don’t show as much of the survival parts as we used to, as the strategy has become so much fun for the audience. But they’re still building a shelter from scratch. They’re still living on a handful of rice.”

Of course, there’s always the quest for the next new thing. VH1 has given the green light to Naked Dating, which will follow a man and a woman as they date with no clothes in an exotic locale.

It’s all about raising the survival stakes, putting new twists on the reality formats. Jokes Derek Santos of RealityTVWorld.com, “Hypothermic and Really Scared is coming soon.”

Reader comments posted to this article may be published in our print edition. All rights reserved. This copyrighted material may not be re-published without permission. Links are encouraged.